March 25, 2020

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can’t.

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency, and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail.

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.

The system is rigged. But we can fix it.

Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none.

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it – as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent [Saez & Zucman].

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same.

As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism – socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths.

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.”

He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion – roughly one hundred times the size of his company’s investment program for America’s poor cities.

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 – a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank.He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders – not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business – to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders – ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value – such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt – and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household oweing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.

So what do we do about it?

The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead.

February 11, 2020

"What kind of unbelievable moral framework allowed this White House to propose $182 billion in cuts to nutrition assistance from needy families, when nearly one in seven households with children are food insecure?"

Copies of President Trump's FY2021 budget are shown after being delivered to the House Budget Committee on February 10, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday condemned President Donald Trump's newly released $4.8 trillion budget blueprint as a "shameful" proposal that would strip nutrition assistance and healthcare from needy families while rewarding the wealthy and large corporations with more handouts.

"The Trump budget is an immoral document. It is a budget that takes our collective resources and hands them to the wealthiest families and largest corporations in this country and ignores the needs of the most vulnerable among us."—Sen. Bernie Sanders

"The Trump budget for 2021 is a budget of, by, and for the one percent," Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. "It reflects profoundly unethical priorities and shows that the president is—and it gives me no great pleasure to say this—a liar."

Contrary to Trump's campaign promise to shield Medicare, Medicare, and Social Security, the FY2021 budget blueprint calls for more than a trillion in combined cuts to the three programs over the next decade—around $920 billion to Medicaid alone.

The proposal would also slash by billions of dollars the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and federal student loan assistance.

Meanwhile, the plan would boost military spending to over $740 billion in fiscal year 2021, extend Trump's tax cuts for the rich, and provide $2 billion for the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump promised he would not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He lied. The budget Trump released today would:

"The old cliché is that a budget is a moral document," Sanders said. "What kind of unbelievable moral framework allowed this White House to propose $182 billion in cuts to nutrition assistance from needy families, when nearly one in seven households with children are food insecure? The Trump budget, outrageously, even cuts billions from a program that provides nutrition assistance for pregnant women, new moms, and their babies."

The SNAP cuts in Trump's budget are both massive and immediate. SNAP benefits are already small - just $1.40 per person per meal. Cutting the program by a quarter is extremely cruel. pic.twitter.com/IzXNqMbaOS

Sanders vowed to do everything in his power to ensure Trump's plan doesn't make it through Congress.

"The Trump budget is an immoral document," said Sanders. "It is a budget that takes our collective resources and hands them to the wealthiest families and largest corporations in this country and ignores the needs of the most vulnerable among us. It is proof that this president did not care about the 'forgotten men and women' he said he would help—it appears he is too busy enriching his billionaire friends."

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December 09, 2019

"The bulk of a generation of economic growth has been captured and concentrated in a few hands, and many people have barely seen any of it."

New data released Monday explains the numbers behind Sen. Bernie Sanders' often-cited statistic that the three richest Americans hold more wealth than the 160 million people who make up the bottom 50% of the population.

Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent published what he called "stunning" findings from Stanford University economist Gabriel Zucman, showing how both an explosion in annual earnings by the rich and an increasingly regressive tax structure have combined to allow the top 1% of Americans' wealth to triple over the past five decades.

Meanwhile, working people are taking home just $8,000 more per year than they did in 1970.

In what Sargent called "the triumph of the rich, which is one of the defining stories of our time," the richer a household is, the more its take-home wealth has grown in the past 50 years.

The top 1% of earners make an average of more than $1 million per year after accounting for taxes they pay, a 50-year increase of more than $800,000—100 times the growth rate of the bottom 50%.

The wealth of the top .1% is five times larger than it was in 1970, while that of the top .01% is seven times larger, at over $24 million in 2018.

Zucman and fellow economist Emmanuel Saez, his co-author of the new book "The Triumph of Injustice," provided a chart showing how each group of earners' take-home pay has changed since 1970. The wealthiest Americans' assets skyrocketed by millions of dollars even in the first decade of the 21st century—when people in the bottom 50% saw their average take-home income decrease.

For middle-income earners since 1970, income-plus-effective tax rates have gone from $44,000 to about $75,000—a greater increase than those in the bottom 50% of earners, "but still their income growth rate has been very low," Zucman told the Post.

Zucman, who with Saez advised Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on her Ultra-Millionaires Tax, emphasized that both the explosion of yearly income at the top and the effective tax rates of people in all income brackets must be taken into account to understand the massive wealth gap.

"You have two trends reinforcing each other," Zucman told the Post. "There has been the rise in market income inequality—the rise in pretax income inequality. At the same time, the tax system has become much less progressive at the top of the income distribution."

"People have this idea that government redistribution has upset some of the rise in inequality, but essentially that's not the case," the economist added.

Zucman's findings were revealed two months after New York Times columnist David Leonhardt published a graphic showing how in 2018, for the first time in U.S. history, the 400 richest Americans paid less in taxes than any other income group.

The richest Americans have benefited from numerous changes to tax laws and enforcement in recent decades, Sargent wrote, "including domestic and international tax avoidance, the whittling away of the estate and corporate taxes, and the repeated downsizing of top marginal rates."

Tony Annett of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University wrote that Zucman's research shows how "it is no longer meaningful to rely on GDP" as a measure of economic well-being, since the benefits of growth are no longer being shared among all earners as they were in previous eras.

With this kind of distribution, it is no longer meaningful to rely on GDP, not even accounting for its other deficiencies. GDP became a widely used measure of economic well-being at a time when the benefits of growth were shared widely. https://t.co/IIL5EYMMGy

Seth D. Michaels of the Union of Concerned Scientists described Zucman's findings as showing how many people of his generation have seen the bulk of economic growth "captured and concentrated in a few hands."

even if you know that inequality is increasing, the scale is staggering to consider. the bulk of a *generation* of economic growth has been captured and concentrated in a few hands, and many people have barely seen any of it. https://t.co/XldPkUoIM9

"The tiny number of people raking in the overwhelming majority of the last 40 years of economic growth are distorting the economy and the political system like a black hole, everything falling toward their interests at high speed," Michaels wrote.

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December 02, 2019

I may also go for Michael Bloomberg if he gets a high poll rating by October 2020.

Otherwise, I’ll being choosing between Warren and Sanders. Like many people, I'm getting more taken in by the urgent priority to defeat Trump. Besides climate change, there are also other extremely significant societal problems noted below that for some time have been tearing our country apart socially and economically. If these aren’t addressed convincingly by Bloomberg, I don't think Democrats will go for him in the nomination process. Things don't have to be revolutionarily ‘torn down,’ but major constructive changes are a necessity. Such an approach calls for a timely phasing in of well-targeted structural improvements in following areas: healthcare, income/wealth gap, infrastructure, poor quality pre-college education and burdensome college tuition costs that are adding to impoverishment millions of families caused by decades of stagnant wages.

Right now, it's obvious the general public doesn't have a clue what Bloomberg's constituency is beyond the well-to-do, socially liberal and fiscally conservative types.

On the positive side, he doesn't need their money. Past issues he has focused most on are climate change, gun control and fighting the fiscalpolicies of the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But I doubt Bloomberg can win the nomination if he fails to address clearly his approach and solutions to following severely ingrained societal problems areas. They will only get much worse and complex, perhaps even become unsolvable, as a result of years of government reliance on incremental band aid improvements to Big structural problems. Political polarization and money interests have caused an absolutely deplorable ineffectiveness in bottom-up and top-down governance that meets societal wants, needs fairly and pragmatically for all.

HEALTHCARE: Quality healthcare for the average family has reached the insane cost level of $16,000-$19,000 annually in premiums, deductibles, copays for mediocre medical coverage. Extremely high healthcare and college costs combined with almost stagnant wage growth the past 40 years for over 80% of U.S. households is an 'economic high risk recipe' for an eventual societal implosion. If EU countries can deliver universal healthcare plans for 10 to 80 million populations at half the household cost with better medical coverage, why can't we do the same - say, by developing a Medicare Plan For ALL Option (that incorporates Obamacare) for +-120 million households that are currently self-insured? Prove its superior benefits first with a smaller step that will eventually attract others.

INCOME/WEALTH GAP: Since 1979, an incredibly huge income/wealth Gap has been taking place between the top 10% and bottom 90%. (see reference). The average yearly wage of the Bottom 90% was $29,608 in 1979 vs. $36,182 in 2017, a rise of 22.2%. The average yearly wage incomes of the Top 9% and 1% were $152,476 and $718,766 in 2017, an increase since 1979 of 57.4% and 157.3%, respectively. And the wage of the Top 0.1% since 1979 has been out of sight increasing from $622,018 to $2,756,865 in 2017, an increase of 343.2%. These wage figures exclude income from stocks, bonds, other investments. They reflect fact we have the lowest progressive tax rates and highest income (wealth) disparities of all world countries except perhaps China and India. U.S. highest progressive tax rate is 37% on incomes above $500,000 per year versus 51.75% in the Netherlands on incomes above $75,000 (euro 68,500).

Here’s a stark summary of U.S. average wage thresholds of the Top 10% and Bottom 90% wage earner groups.

WAGE GROUP SHARES Of TOTAL WAGES – 1979-2017

EARNER GROUP

WAGE THRESHOLD

% Of TOTAL WAGES

Top 0.1%

$2,756,900

5.2%

Top 1%

$718,766

13.4%

Top 5%

$299,810

28.0%

Top 10%

$118,400

39.1%

Bottom 90%

$ 36,182

60.9%

The Economic Policy Institute reports: “The Bottom 90% earned 69.8% of all wages in 1979 but just 60.9% in 2017. In contrast, the Top 1% increased its share of wages from 7.3% to 13.4% in 2017, a near doubling. The growth of wages for the Top 0.1% drives the Top 1`% share of wages which tripled Top 0.1%’s share of total wages from 1.6% in 1979 to 5.2% in 2017.”

Around 140 million of 168 million U.S. workers have been living on a near survival wage growth trend for a long time. A wage of less than $25,000 is earned by 42% of U.S. workers or ±70 million workers. The Top 1% of Americans own 40% of our nation's wealth. Several billionaires including JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Bridgewater Associates, founder Ray Dalio, Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway have said that current levels of income and wealth inequality are unsustainable.

It is well proven that savings and investments of ultra-wealthy Americans do not necessarily "trickle down" in ways that grow the economy or benefit most Americans. Investments of the wealthy including billionaires are planted all over the world in exotic tax shelters, real estate, stocks, bonds, yachts and works of art.

INFRASTRUCTURE & SCHOOLS:According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), it will cost $4.6 trillion to bring America’s infrastructure to a good state of repair. But only 55% has been committed leaving a $2.1 funding gap. Improving roads and bridges alone would require $1.1 trillion more than the states, localities, and federal government have allocated. Schools need another $380 billion beyond what's invested. Waterways, ports, levees, dams need another $150 billion. (see reference). Other studies show that another $473 billion of investments is needed in drinking water treatment and distributions. These needs vary sharply by state due to differences in size, congestion, condition, and age of existing infrastructure.

State dollars and borrowing pay for 72% of Infrastructure projects; the federal government pays just 28% for a very low 0.5% of GDP. State and local spending is now way down from 2.4% of GDP in the early 2000s to 1.87% in 2017 and now is at its lowest level since 1950. Investments in Public Infrastructure stirs economic growth, private productivity, jobs, and can improve a state's quality of life, opportunity, and the environment. Why aren't the private sector investments being made is the BIG question? Is it lack of federal funding because of massive federal deficits, debt and interest cost? Trump's tax cuts went largely to the Top 10% and corporations. These cuts are now contributing to our annual $1 trillion federal deficits.

BUT, if our nation can raise ± $9 trillion in federal funds as we did to save our economy from collapsing during the Great Recession, why can't we come up with ± $3 trillion for critically needed infrastructure/education improvements? These and other societal investments needed can be funded in a major part by raising current maximum federal tax rate of 37% on incomes above $500,000 to 40% on incomes above $1 million – plus eliminating tax avoidance, tax deductions or special tax structures for real estate, loss carry forwards provisions, corporate earnings held abroad in tax havens. The aim should be to introduce fiscally economically constructive tax funding changes that are relatively easy to calculate and oversee, and deter steep rises in federal/state debt levels and interest cost

May 29, 2019

“Oligarchy” means government of and by a few at the top, who exercise power for their own benefit. It comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning “few to rule or command.”

Even a system that calls itself a democracy can become an oligarchy if power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few very wealthy people – a corporate and financial elite.

Their power and wealth increase over time as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets to their advantage, and create or exploit economic monopolies that put even more wealth into their pockets.

Modern-day Russia is an oligarchy, where a handful of billionaires who control most major industries dominate politics and the economy.

During a town hall hosted by Fox News Monday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders countered one of the most common right-wing talking points against Medicare for All and made the case for transitioning to a single-payer system—sparking applause from the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania audience.

"Democratic socialism, to me, is creating a government and an economy and a society which works for all, rather than just the top one percent." —Sen. Bernie Sanders

"Millions of people, every single year, lose their health insurance. You know why? They get fired. Or They quit. And they go to another employer," said the Vermont senator and 2020 presidential contender after Fox moderator Bret Baier suggested 180 million Americans with employer-provided insurance would lose coverage under Medicare for All.

"Every year, millions of workers wake up in the morning and their employer has changed the insurance that they have," Sanders added. "So this is not new... Now what we're talking about actually is stability. That when you have a Medicare for All [program] it is there now and it will be there in the future."

In addition to highlighting specific planks of his policy platform—from Medicare for All to tuition-free public college to a living wage—Sanders also used his Fox News town hall to explain his broader vision of a more egalitarian U.S. society, in which wealth and political power are not concentrated at the very top:

Democratic socialism, to me, is creating a government and an economy and a society which works for all, rather than just the top one percent. It means ending the absurd inequalities that exist today. And I want to lay this out, because you're not going to hear this much on Fox. And you're not going to hear this much in the media in general. And the American people have got to conclude whether we think it is appropriate, and what America is about... to have three families owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society—160 million people. Whether it's appropriate for the top one percent to own more wealth than the bottom 92 percent.

Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont on Fox News: "Democratic socialism to me is creating a governor and an economy that works for all rather than just the top 1%.. we want to create a political system based on one person one vote not billionaires buying elections" #BernieTownHallpic.twitter.com/NzBjhisfux

July 28, 2018

Most people are amazed to find out that, when a bank loans you money, it creates it out of thin air. It is not backed by gold or anything else. Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971. Before that people could cash in US dollars for an equivalent amount of gold. Money not backed by anything is called fiat money. It is created by private banks in the US when they loan you money. In China the government creates the fiat money. A new wrinkle was added during the 2008 financial crisis. Money was also created by the US' central bank, the Federal Reserve which is privately not publicly owned. That money was given to the big banks to keep them solvent. It did not trickle down to the average citizen.

China uses fiat money to keep its workers employed. In addition to activities within China, they are building infrastructure in other countries recreating the Silk Road which was a trade route that connected the Eurasian land mass. It is called the Belt and Road initiative. Since the US government has no mechanism to create fiat money(despite the fact that Abraham Lincoln did it during the Civil War with the introduction of greenbacks), the only fiat money being created in the US goes to big banks and through them to hedge funds which have connections with the big banks.

Fiat money in the US fuels the class division between the 1% and the 99% because it is only made available to Wall Street which actually owns the Fed. In China fiat money not only keeps its workers employed, they are employed doing something constructive - building infrastructure. The only way the US could build much needed infrastructure in the US is for the Treasury to issue more bonds which would only add to the national debt. If there were a true government owned central bank in the US, it could create money to build infrastructure thus creating jobs without the US government going into debt.

China just might have a better way to create fiat money and use it for a constructive purpose. The US fiat money goes mainly to hedge funds which use it to destroy businesses as was the case with the recent Toys R US and Hostess fiascoes. Instead of using fiat money to create jobs, in the US jobs are destroyed when a hedge fund takes a business bankrupt after loading it with debt, extracting money in management fees and shutting it down when it collapses under the weight of all that debt. Employees lose their jobs with no severance pay as was the case with Toys R Us.

China is using fiat money to build the economies of China and other nations from the ground up keeping its workers gainfully employed at the same time. The US is letting its infrastructure and its work force wither while making banks and bank connected hedge funds rich.

Protesters hold signs as they march to Los Angeles City Hall during the 'Occupy Los Angeles' demonstration in solidarity with the 'Occupy Wall Street' protest in New York City on October 1, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

The world's largest economies have grown at a steady pace and unemployment has consistently fallen in the years following the greed-driven global financial crisis of 2008, but income gains during the so-called recovery have been enjoyed almost exclusively by the top one percent while most workers experience "unprecedented wage stagnation."

"Workers' share of national income [in the U.S.] dropped about eight percentage points between 1995 and 2013, faster than anywhere but Poland and South Korea over that time." —Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post

The decline of union bargaining power has been particularly striking in the United States, where just "12 percent of U.S. workers were covered by collective bargaining in 2016—among all the nations the OECD tracks, only Turkey, Lithuania and South Korea have been lower at any point this millennium," notes the Washington Post's Andrew Van Dam. "Workers' share of national income [in the U.S.] dropped about eight percentage points between 1995 and 2013, faster than anywhere but Poland and South Korea over that time."

New report shows wages of the top 1% have grown much faster than those of other earners, across 9 @OECD countries. We need to build an economy that works for everyone, not just the few at the top. https://t.co/450Q8aW4aP

In a statement on Tuesday, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría said "[t]his trend of wageless growth in the face of a rise in employment highlights the structural changes in our economies that the global crisis has deepened, and it underlines the urgent need for countries to help workers."

"Well-targeted policy measures and closer collaboration with social partners are needed to help workers adapt to and benefit from a rapidly evolving world of work, in order to achieve inclusive growth," Gurría added.

May 24, 2018

Wouldn't it be nice if capitalism were modified so that those who are super successful would have their earnings capped at, say, $100 million, and whatever exceeded that went to build affordable housing for the homeless? Is any invention worth a billion dollars? Can anyone spend more than a hundred million? The capitalist system is set up in such a way that successful entrepreneurs attract huge amounts of capital from investors. Are they rich because people buy their products? No, they are rich because rich people buy their stock.

A person's riches should be capped and the excess should be spent on society in general. Society is getting the short end of the stick while rich entrepreneurs get more money than they could possibly spend. A wealth tax would accomplish the same goal. The system as it exists today sucks because it is set up in such a way that the rich get richer, and the poor lose their jobs and their housing. Most of the successful companies today use the internet and automation to eliminate jobs. The more jobs they eliminate, the more Wall Street likes them and bids up their stock.

Then besides this, Trump and the Republicans give them huge tax breaks. The tax burden is borne by the middle class and the poor while the rich corporations buy back their own stock making them even richer.

Why are people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg so incredibly rich? Sure, they’re great businesspeople, and they had the right ideas at the right time. But most importantly, when their businesses succeeded, they owned a large portion of the equity.

Equity, or stock, is the riskiest type of asset ownership. It’s the most volatile, and it’s the first to get wiped out when a company goes bankrupt. But it also has unlimited upside -- the gains can, in theory, be infinite. It’s the entire upper tail. So of course the largest fortunes that we see -- the richest individuals -- were made through equity ownership.

But the big payouts to other stockholders are also responsible for much of the vast increase in wealth inequality. In 1980, the richest 5 percent of Americans owned half of the country’s wealth. In 2012, it was almost two-thirds.

Stock represents nothing more than rich people, who have access to cheap interest free money spewed out by the Federal Reserve, spending that money to buy stock which bids up the price. Then they cash in and pay off the loan. Riches are generated not by a company selling goods and services to the general population, but by financial manipulation of stock values. Any sane society would limit these types of activities since they do not further the interests of society in general. The net result is money creation that goes immediately into the hands of the rich making them even richer and in a position to control the political system, setting up the laws so that they favor the rich even more.

For years, armies of bank lobbyists and executives have groaned about how financial rules are hurting them. But there's a big problem with their story—banks are making record profits," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) concluded in a tweet on Tuesday. (Photo: Alex Proimos/Flickr/cc)

As America's largest corporations continue their unprecedented stock buyback spree in the wake of President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut, new government data published on Tuesday showed that U.S. banks are also smashing records thanks to the GOP tax law, raking in $56 billion in net profits during the first quarter of 2018—an all-time high.

"The Trump/Republican tax plan has been nothing but a giant gift to corporations so that executives and shareholders can get richer." —Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

The new data, released by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), comes as the House of Representatives is gearing up to pass a bipartisan deregulatory measure that would reward massive Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup while dramatically increasing the risk of another financial crisis.

As Common Dreamsreported, the Senate easily passed the bill in March with the help of 16 Democrats.

The banking industry's record-shattering profits fit with an entirely predictable pattern that has emerged following the passage of the GOP tax bill last December: America's most profitable corporations are posting obscene profits and using that cash to reward wealthy shareholders through stock buybacks while investing little to nothing in workers, despite their lofty promises.

"For years, armies of bank lobbyists and executives have groaned about how financial rules are hurting them. But there's a big problem with their story—banks are making record profits." —Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

According to a CNN analysis published on Sunday, "S&P 500 companies showered Wall Street with at least $178 billion of stock buybacks during the first three months of 2018." As Common Dreamsreported earlier this month, major corporations are on track to send $1 trillion to rich investors through buybacks and dividend increases by the end of the year.

Most Americans, meanwhile, have said they are seeing very few noticeable benefits from the massive tax cuts and—according to a new study by United Way—nearly half of the U.S. population is still struggling to afford basic necessities like food, housing, and healthcare.

"The Trump/Republican tax plan has been nothing but a giant gift to corporations so that executives and shareholders can get richer," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday. "We've got to repeal the outrageous corporate welfare of this tax plan and pass real tax reform that actually helps working families—not the one percent."

Instead of addressing the deep-seated financial struggles much of the American public is facing even as the stock market continues to soar and as Trump boasts of an economic boom, Congress is preparing to provide an even greater windfall to wealthy bankers on Tuesday by gutting crucial post-crisis regulations and putting taxpayers on the hook for yet another bailout.

This morning, it was announced that America’s banking sector hit a new record high of $56 billion in net income in the first quarter of 2018.

"For years, armies of bank lobbyists and executives have groaned about how financial rules are hurting them. But there's a big problem with their story—banks are making record profits," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) concluded in a tweet on Tuesday. "Congress has done enough favors for big banks—the House should reject the Bank Lobbyist Act."

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Occupy Oakland General Strike on October 2, 2011. (photo/cc/Brian Sims)

More than two-thirds of the world's entire wealth will be owned by the richest 1% of people by 2030, new research warns.

The shocking findings of the new report produced by the UK's House of Commons Library claims that if trends which began after the 2008 financial crisis continue, the 1% will control 64% of world's money in just 12 years' time.

The widening gap between the 1% and everyone else was first highlighted by the Occupy Wall Street movement, which started in 2011 and famously used the slogan: "We are the 99%."

The study claims that the wealth of the richest one percent grows at six percent annually, outstripping the three percent annual growth of everyone else, causing a continual movement of money to the top.

Polling that accompanies the study indicated that the majority of people are unhappy about wealth inequality. Thirty-four percent said that the super-rich would have the most power in 2030, more even than governments (28 percent).

More than four in ten of those polled also said they worried that rising income inequality would lead to corruption or the "super-rich enjoying unfair influence on government policy".

Since 2008, the assets of the top 1% have been growing at twice the rate of the other 99%.

If that rate carries on, the 1% will own about $305 trillion by 2030, up from $139 trillion today.

The research was commissioned by Liam Byrne, the former Labour cabinet minister, as part of a gathering of MPs, academics, business leaders, trade unions and civil society leaders focused on addressing the problem...

The hope is to create pressure for global action when leaders of the G20 group of nations gather for a summit in Buenos Aires in November. Byrne, who organised the first OECD global parliamentary conference on inclusive growth, said he believed global inequality was “now at a tipping point”.

“If we don’t take steps to rewrite the rules of how our economies work, then we condemn ourselves to a future that remains unequal for good,” he said. “That’s morally bad, and economically disastrous, risking a new explosion in instability, corruption and poverty.”

Anti-capitalist and anti-Trump protesters took to the streets across Switzerland ahead of the U.S. president's expected arrival on Friday. (Photo: Tasnim News Agency/cc)

Ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's arrival at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, thousands of anti-Trump protesters took to the streets across Switzerland, decrying racism, sexism, capitalism, and dirty energy practices.

"We are protesting against both Trump and the WEF," Young Socialists of Switzerland president Tamara Funiciello toldThe Local, denouncing the U.S. president as well as the meeting that brings together businessmen and world leaders from across the globe.

"The discussions between the richest one percent of the world and a man who fuels an aggressive atmosphere towards women and minorities," Funiciello added, "has no place in Switzerland."

Thousands of people marched in Zurich while hundreds descended on Geneva, Lausanne, and Fribourg. Their signs declared: "Trump Not Welcome"; "Switzerland Is Hosting Nazis"; "World Economic Fiasco"; "Racist Sexist Capitalist"; "Don't Touch Women's Rights"; "There Is No Planet B"; and "No Trump, No Coal, No Gas, No Fossil Fuels."

Despite patrols by thousands of Swiss soldiers and a ban on protesting in Davos, where the meeting is being held, Reuters reports that on Tuesday, "About 20 demonstrators broke through security to reach the Davos Congress Centre, holding banners and shouting 'Wipe out WEF' before they were peacefully disbanded by police."

"Trump is just one of the other people we disagree with. We've been protesting every year now against the World Economic Forum and if Trump comes or not we don't care," one protester in Davos, Alex Hedinger, told Reuters. "Trump is just, maybe he's just the best symbol of this world."

The U.S. president and several of his cabinet members are expected to arrive Friday, the final day of the WEF meeting, and Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech that White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said will bring the "America First" message to the world stage.

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